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Pets With Issues Show-runners/co-creators Gabrielle Allan and Jennifer Crittenden take us behind the scenes of Fox’s hot new show HouseBroken.
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f you enjoy Fox’s latest primetime animated series HouseBroken, you need to thank exec producer and co-creator Clea DuVall’s very hard-to-please pet cat. As she explained during a summer press event, “I have a cat who I have a very complicated relationship with, who just seems permanently dissatisfied, and I wanted more than anything to be able to go to a counselor together [and figure out how] I could finally make her happy. Then, I just started thinking that would just be such a great idea for a show, getting at what animals’ interior lives are really like.” Fortunately, DuVall talked about her show idea with exec producers/co-creators Gabrielle Allan (Veep, Scrubs) and Jennifer Crittenden (Everybody Loves Raymond, Seinfeld, The Simpsons) after a table read when the three were working on HBO comedy Veep. “Jen and I are both pet lovers and pet owners, so we thought centering a show on animals in group therapy would be a great idea,” says Allan. “We also love therapy, and thought it would be a good way to tackle human issues in a fun and palatable way for everyone.”
A Poodle in Her Prime The result of their collaboration is a new animated series which centers on Honey (Lisa Kudrow), a standard poodle who runs group therapy sessions to help animals from her neighborhood
manage neuroses brought on by their owners and each other. The show’s super hip voice cast includes Nat Faxon as a sloppy St. Bernard, Will Forte as a sex-positive tortoise, Sharon Horgan as an aging Persian cat, Jason Mantzoukas as a
‘I am very happy that we were able to include silly fun and animal humor as well as the therapeutic and psychological aspects of the characters. We were able to walk that line and explore the issues that were projected on these animals.’ — Exec producer and co-creator Gabrielle Allan
www.animationmagazine.net 40 june|julyy 21
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